Leeds United v Tottenham Hotspur: return to Elland Road is child's play for Aaron Lennon

It was appropriate, when the draw for the fourth round of the FA Cup was made,
that Aaron Lennon declared that his present club, Tottenham Hotspur, being
pitted against his former club, Leeds United, made him “feel like a little
kid”.

Back to Leeds: Aaron Lennon is excited to be playing against his former club Photo: GETTY IMAGES

After all, Lennon was not much more than a child when the then Leeds United manager, Peter Reid, threw him into a team that was in “complete turmoil” and sliding out of the Premier League.

Indeed, Lennon set a Premier League record when, aged just 16 years and 129 days, he came on a substitute in August 2003 — against, ironically enough, Spurs.

“He was a breath of fresh air, to be fair to the boy,” Reid recalls of his bold decision to blood the Leeds-born winger. It was a move, Reid admits, borne of desperation as well as intuition.

“He had pace and we needed pace in the team,” he says. “He had a great balance about him and for a young man he wasn’t outgoing but he had an inner confidence.”

This is a common theme when discussing Lennon who played 43 matches for Leeds before being signed by Tottenham Hotspur for a snip of just £500,000 in 2005 by the club’s then sporting director Frank Arnesen who, however, decamped to Chelsea before the winger made an appearance.

Nevertheless, Arnesen was effusive in his praise, comparing Lennon to the Dutch winger Arjen Robben and it should not be forgotten that amid the hullabaloo about Theo Walcott’s inclusion in the England squad for the 2006 World Cup finals, he did not actually play. Lennon did.

Not that his progress has been as rapid as his nickname — “Roadrunner” — and Reid says there were always areas for improvement in Lennon’s game which, under Spurs’ head coach Andre Villas-Boas, are finally being developed. He needed to be coached intensely.

“Now? I think he’s improving,” Reid says, admitting he had concerns that Lennon’s career was in danger of stalling, concerns that were shared by Villas-Boas’ predecessor Harry Redknapp. Redknapp liked Lennon and valued his speed — indeed he told £15 million signing David Bentley that he would always lose out in a choice between the pair because he was slower — but despaired at his lack of incisiveness and end-product.

Reid concurs. “I don’t think his final ball was great and I don’t think he took a lot of care with it and maybe he thought it was all too easy,” he says. “But he’s getting that into his game now, without a doubt. Certainly this season he has been very impressive.

“With his pace and his ability to go past people and with him on one side and Gareth Bale on the other, Tottenham are a force. He is scoring the odd goal now and he’s getting in there where wide-men have got to get when the ball is on the opposite side and he’s delivering the ball a lot better nowadays.

“I still think there are improvements in him and if he does believe in himself then I think he can go right to the top.” This is a sense shared by Villas-Boas who has always been an advocate of utilising pace, of attacking play, of wanting to harness wide players.

Interestingly, he also identified the need to develop Lennon’s importance to the squad — and the player responded when given the captaincy, last September, for the Europa League tie at home to Lazio.

Villas-Boas is, also, above all, a coach and he will work with players individually as he has done with Lennon on the pitches at Spurs’ new state-of-the-art training ground in Enfield. The time has not been wasted and the consensus within the club is that Lennon is, probably, the player of the season so far despite Jermain Defoe’s goals, the plaudits handed to Sandro and the enduring interest in Bale.

His emphatic contribution in the draw against Manchester United last weekend increased that belief while Scott Parker, a shrewd judge as well as a team-mate, has described him as “unplayable” when in full flight.

Reid, for one, is not surprised. “He was a shy boy, quiet, but, as I say, he had that inner confidence in him which I liked,” he says.

“When he started training with the first-team, it wasn’t a problem for him. That was a good sign. When I threw him in, he was only a baby. He’s still a young man now, at 25.”

Lennon’s presence in the FA Cup on Sunday will hurt Leeds fans, of course. He was contracted to the club’s academy at 15 and turned professional — after that Premier League debut — aged 17. He was also the last of the great generation of Leeds academy players, led by Alan Smith and Jonathan Woodgate, and grew up in the city.

“Sometimes he lives a bit in the shadows,” Villas-Boas says of Lennon’s lack of attention. That, however, will not be the case at Elland Road.